Financial AnalysisEstimation of costs and benefitsSpreadsheet AnalysisValue estimationFinancial ForecastDeveloping Financial ModelsPricing StocksTrading in Financial MarketsPricing Bonds
Foundational Finance for Strategic Decision Making Specialization
Learn Finance to Understand a Business Strategy. Master An Introduction to the Fundamentals of Value Creation
Offered By
Foundational Finance for Strategic Decision Making SpecializationUniversity of MichiganWhat you will learn
Understand the sources of value of companies
Evaluate the cash flows of a project
Evaluate the risk of a project
Value a project and a strategy
To be able to understand and apply one of the two main building blocks of finance - Time Value of Money (TVM)
To evaluate alternatives
To make decisions
Skills you will gain
About this Specialization
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In this specialization, you’ll focus on the mechanics and intuition of the main building block of finance — the time value of money. You’ll learn the structure and basics through assignments and tests that are introductory in nature but with real-world applications.
We developed this specialization with the express purpose of enabling you to understand and apply these foundational principles of finance to your everyday life. Understanding how to use finance for personal decisions will also help you understand and excel at making professional decisions. After the successful completion of this series, you will be equipped to make thoughtful decisions based on a framework that uses multiple advances in modern financial theory over the past several decades. The most important features of this specialization are: (a) it is an integrated set of courses with a focus on understanding both the theory and applicability of finance; and (b) it is applied in execution — everything is covered using examples.
The four courses in this specialization all build on each other, use real-world examples, and include richly designed assessments/quizzes to test your knowledge and enhance your learning experience. Assessments will progressively build in complexity as you better understand the applicability of finance to complex issues.
Applied Learning Project
The entire program is constructed around real-world problems, both while learning various frameworks and concepts, and also in numerous assessments crafted to give you an opportunity to apply and learn. The fourth course serves as a capstone experience that puts everything together. This experience will enable you to understand projects and the strategic direction of a company.
Shareable Certificate
Earn a Certificate upon completion
100% online courses
Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.
Flexible Schedule
Set and maintain flexible deadlines.
Beginner Level
Some exposure, or an interest in, real world problems typically gained through a couple of years of work experience. An aptitude for numbers.
Approximately 4 months to complete
Suggested pace of 3 hours/week
English
Subtitles: English, Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Chinese (Simplified), Italian, Vietnamese, Korean, German, Russian, Turkish, Spanish
Shareable Certificate
Earn a Certificate upon completion
100% online courses
Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.
Flexible Schedule
Set and maintain flexible deadlines.
Beginner Level
Some exposure, or an interest in, real world problems typically gained through a couple of years of work experience. An aptitude for numbers.
Approximately 4 months to complete
Suggested pace of 3 hours/week
English
Subtitles: English, Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Chinese (Simplified), Italian, Vietnamese, Korean, German, Russian, Turkish, Spanish
How the Specialization Works
Take Courses
A Coursera Specialization is a series of courses that helps you master a skill. To begin, enroll in the Specialization directly, or review its courses and choose the one you'd like to start with. When you subscribe to a course that is part of a Specialization, you’re automatically subscribed to the full Specialization. It’s okay to complete just one course — you can pause your learning or end your subscription at any time. Visit your learner dashboard to track your course enrollments and your progress.
Hands-on Project
Every Specialization includes a hands-on project. You'll need to successfully finish the project(s) to complete the Specialization and earn your certificate. If the Specialization includes a separate course for the hands-on project, you'll need to finish each of the other courses before you can start it.
Earn a Certificate
When you finish every course and complete the hands-on project, you'll earn a Certificate that you can share with prospective employers and your professional network.
There are 4 Courses in this Specialization
Introduction to Time Value of Money (TVM)
706 ratings
The strength of finance is that it takes a structured approach to decision making, with one key building block underlying all decisions — understanding the value of time, or the Time Value of Money (TVM). In this course, we will develop this building block using introductory, and simple, applications. We will learn about the Time Value of Money (TVM), Simple Future Value (FV) , Simple Present Value (PV) , Future Value of Annuity, Loans, compounding, and Valuing Perpetuities. We will introduce the framework in a carefully structured and replicable way to prepare you to explore more advanced applications in the rest of the specialization. In the follow-on courses, we will expand the applications to more complex real-world decisions.
Advanced Concepts in Time Value of Money (TVM)
20 ratings
This course builds upon the fundamental concept of Time Value of Money (TVM) using more advanced applications and questions. You will apply the TVM concept in real-life problems of financial planning and saving for college. You will also learn more about loans and apply TVM concepts to borrowing and lending. You will realize that — while the applications are seemingly more complex, but when seen and broken-up into bite-size components — the framework, principles, and tools remain the same.
Stocks and Bonds
305 ratings
In this course, we will apply the central concept and applications of Time Value of Money (TVM) to explore the structure and pricing of stocks and bonds at an introductory level. In this course, you will learn about bonds, different types of bonds (Zero Coupon bonds, Government bonds). You will learn about bond pricing calculations and see their direct connection to market data on bonds. You will also learn about stocks, and their pricing and valuation. You will learn about growth and dividend stocks and how to use market data.
Advanced Understanding of Stocks and Bonds
12 ratings
This final course will cover more advanced aspects of bonds and stocks that will help you make smart personal decisions and develop a keen understanding of how governments and companies borrow from us. You will better understand stocks and bonds valuation and take a deeper dive using real-world problems. For stocks, you will review what you have already learned and understand valuation. You will learn about growth, different types of growth both bad and good. You will also get an opportunity to apply these concepts in practice assignments. For bonds: you will review what you have already learned. You will learn about different sources of risk in bonds. Lastly you will get an opportunity to apply these concepts in practice assignments.
Offered by
University of Michigan
The mission of the University of Michigan is to serve the people of Michigan and the world through preeminence in creating, communicating, preserving and applying knowledge, art, and academic values, and in developing leaders and citizens who will challenge the present and enrich the future.
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